- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
President Susan Hockfield unveils MIT’s grand-scale initiative to confront “the urgent challenge of our time: clean, affordable energy to power the world.” In much the same way that MIT “played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II,” she calls for the Institute to muster its formidable forces to speed a transformation of the global energy landscape. Hockfield explains how MIT arrived at this “defining moment in its history.”
An overwhelming consensus of faculty and students expressed passionate concern about energy, says Hockfield, and “when a community as brilliant and diverse converges on one issue, it’s a folly not to heed them.” And beyond MIT, for the first time in a generation, the public and politicians have turned to the subject. This may be one of those rare moments, says Hockfield, when society looks itself in the mirror and “admits the truth”: our “comfortable lives are due in large measure to cheap and abundant fossil fuels” for which we will pay a steep price.
The “hydra-headed,” intertwined challenges of energy supply and demand, security, and environmental concerns mean that MIT must pursue a set of solutions simultaneously. But there is no better institution than MIT, with its practical mindset and engineering know-how, says Hockfield, to be a “catalyst for this technological phase shift.”
In his overview of MIT’s Energy Research Council (ERC) initiative, Ernest Moniz describes the “crying need for new technological and policy tools” to contend with a “perfect storm of energy challenges.” This interdisciplinary venture, which attempts to envision the next 50 years of energy use and impact, has crafted what Moniz calls a “a robust set of tools” for dealing with growing energy demand, uncertainties about energy supply and security, and climate change.
The ERC’s approach to this set of issues involves developing science and technology for a clean energy future; improving current energy systems; and designing advanced and efficient energy systems for a world undergoing rapid demographic and climate change. MIT will once again bring “muscle to bear on a complex societal problem,” believes Moniz, and while the Institute can’t do it all, it can make a significant difference in terms of science, technology and policy options.
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Dr. Susan Hockfield
MIT President
Professor of NeurosciencePrior to her arrival at MIT in 2004, Susan Hockfield served as Provost at Yale University, where she was also William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology. She previously served as Dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Hockfield is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
She earned a B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester in 1973, and a Ph.D. in anatomy and neuroscience from the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1979.Ernest J. Moniz
Director, MIT Energy Initiative
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems
Co-director of the Laboratory for Energy and the EnvironmentErnest J. Moniz has served on the MIT faculty since 1973. He was Under Secretary of the Department of Energy from October 1997 until January 2001. He also served from 1995 to 1997 as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President.
At MIT, Moniz was Head of the Department of Physics and Director of the Bates Linear Accelerator Center. His principal research contributions have been in theoretical nuclear physics, particularly in advancing nuclear reaction theory at high energy.
Moniz received a B.S. degree in physics from Boston College, a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford University, and honorary doctorates from the University of Athens and the University of Erlangen-Nurenburg. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Moniz received the 1998 Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation. - About the Host
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About the Host
Energy Research Council
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Opening Remarks
Overview of the Energy Research Report
- Dr. Susan Hockfield
Ernest J. Moniz - May 3, 2006
- Running Time: 53:56
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